Battle of Alice
The Battle of Alice was a battle in the Flettan Rebellion of 1106 between rebels under Ander Sperares and elements of the Army of Tuscaloosa under R15 Franklin Vincent. It took place on 29 May 1107. Prelude On 23 April 1107, Dave DeGrenier had fought the Army of Thunder Bay to a stalement in the Battle of Goldcreek. He had lost a third of his effective force in the process and withdrew from the pass. It would allow the Armies of Thunder Bay, Regina and Appalachia through easily, but Erik Tresler's horrid performance as well as the maix est regine'al troops performance in passes would ensure that nothing would cross the Goldcreek pass intrepidly. After Greg West's decisive battles at Anthracite and Windermere, DeGrenier decided to push on Cascyst itself, presuming it to be undefended with most of its army on the wrong side of the Rockies and the Drubyetskian'al or hunting down Xethos Stamnoudus and Natalya Syntikov further south. R15 Franklin Vincent, though most of his troops were indeed out of position, had held his elite troops in reserves in Cascyst. He had intended to mix these troops into the Army of Tuscaloosa before Stamnoudus had deconstructed it in two battles. DeGrenier did not have the troops had his disposal to destroy it quickly, so he decided to instead attack its supply lines and hope that Vincent's traditional inability to work without easy supplies would serve him well. The outpost of Alice was his first target. It was somewhat out of the way, but it overlooked the port of Brackendale, which was a stopping point for goods being transported from the provinces of Berlak, Verktagyt, the Anglin Eylands and Esk Ridge to Cascyst. It was not a walled outpost and it was in the middle of a forest, so DeGrenier sent guerilla expert Ander Sperares to take it out and seize the commerce. Battle Sperares marched on the outpost at 04:00 on 29 May, under the cover of darkness. The garrison was small, only about 250 swordsmen from Vincent's guard. Sperares had the same 500-man company at his disposal as he had at Goldcreek. Upon arriving and counting the barracks, he launched a quick assault on the outpost. Though the settlement wasn't walled off, each building was constructed to be defensible, so all of the sentries on duties ran inside the buildings once a warning bell was rung. Now in control of the compound, Sperares assaulted the storage house and found it deserted. Zachary Wild, his second-in-command, decided that he would rather have the supplies instead of the enemy and began sending troops in to start removing things and placing it in carts that he intended to steal. The garrison troops began to realize that their food was being taken and started charging out, catching Sperares and Wild somewhat off guard. An unorganized brawl followed, but within a half-hour, Vincent's troops had been for the most part vanquished. Aftermath The battle was a clear tactical victory for rebels, though the complete lack of scale made it far from decisive. He had suffered about 20 casualties and inflicted about 50 and captured the rest. Strategically, it ended up being much less inconsequential as it perhaps should have been. Vincent did not know that Alice had been wiped out until he found out he had not been receiving supplies from Brackendale (which had immediately been taken over by Sperares). He had absolutely no idea who had taken it out and began recalling his garrisons all over the Fletta. This, along with Starr Magnussen with his 19,000 NI troops a few days away and a quick victory against another small garrison at Clayton enabled DeGrenier to besiege Cascyst on 9 June, effectively locking in Vincent and his guard.